808Cvr.cg2 5/2/05 11:24 AM Page 2 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY HAAS School of Business A BRIEF CENTENNIAL HISTORY 1898•1998 numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page A numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page 1 HAAS School of Business A BRIEF CENTENNIAL HISTORY 1898•1998 numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page 2 Editors: Andy Bouman Ute S. Frey Design: Archer Design, Inc. Cover Photography: Harvey Helfand Printing: Color Graphics numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page 3 Contents Foreword 5 I. Business Education Comes to Berkeley 6 II. College of Commerce Offers Business Education in a Liberal Arts Setting 10 III. Grether Builds a Solid Foundation for Modern Business Education 14 IV. Berkeley Reforms Its Business School Curriculum 20 V. The Haas School of Business in the Making 24 VI. Building for the Future 30 numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page 4 numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page 5 Foreword A BRIEF CENTENNIAL HISTORY 1898–1998 In 1998, the Haas School of Business at the University of and involvement will continue to ensure the school’s academic California at Berkeley celebrates its 100th anniversary – a tribute excellence in the future. to the school’s loyal alumni, friends, faculty, students, and staff In the following pages, we have recounted the Haas School’s whose dedicated service have produced 100 years of leadership in first 100 years – from its humble beginnings as the College of business education at America’s premier public university. Commerce to the internationally acclaimed Haas School of Established on the Berkeley campus through the vision of Business we know today. We have highlighted some faculty mem- Arthur Rodgers and the financial support of Cora Jane Flood, the bers and alumni whose names you may recognize and whose expe- school – originally called the College of Commerce – set about to riences help tell the school’s story. Many more have made invalu- enrich the cultural and trade opportunities of the Pacific Rim. able contributions to the school and to the community, and we From the beginning, the College of Commerce focused on the regret that we cannot name them all. commercial opportunities in the international and entrepreneurial We would like to thank the following individuals for con- arenas of the 20th century. Renamed the Haas School of Business tributing to this publication: Frederick Balderston, Laura T. in 1986, after Walter A. Haas Sr., BS 10, former president of Levi Brehm, Earl F. Cheit, Tenny Frost, Joseph Garbarino, William A. Strauss & Co., the school continues to provide innovative learning Hasler, Richard Holton, David Irons, Melissa Lagreid, Christine opportunities, research on a rapidly evolving global economy, and Leigh-Taylor, Thomas Marschak, Raymond Miles, Maurice creative approaches to the challenges of the 21st century. Moonitz, Frederick Morrissey, Joan Rex, and Christine Rosen. Alumni and friends play an integral role in the Haas School’s E. T. Grether’s oral history and his articles in CalBusiness, Maurice past and its future. Thanks to their success, financial support, and Moonitz’s History of Accounting at Berkeley, Dow Votaw’s History of participation in the Haas community, the school has developed Business and Public Policy, the Bancroft Library, and the Regional into a preeminent institution of higher learning. Their assistance Oral History Office were invaluable resources in our research. numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page 6 Business Education Comes to Berkeley 1898• 1914 The visionary concept of a college at the University of California to prepare students for careers in commerce was first proposed in an 1883 commencement address by Arthur Rodgers, a Berkeley graduate and well-traveled business professional. He stirred his audience, inspired the governor, and set in motion ideas that, fifteen years later, would create the nation’s first college of commerce at a public university. At the time of Rodgers’ commencement address, the university itself was only 15 years old and owed its existence to the gold rush pioneers and the preachers and teachers that had followed them west. Their collective vision for a College of California predated even the admission of California as a state in 1850. Henry Durant, a Congregational minister and College of Commerce Enrollment: response by Cora Jane Flood, the university Yale graduate, headed for California in 1852 established a college to teach the art of com- 1898 3 students rthur Rodgers brought the idea of telling his friends he “had a college on the merce. 1902 5 students Abusiness education to Berkeley in brain.” He opened a private college, which he In his Berkeley commencement address, his 1883 commencement address, called the College of California, with three 1908 192 students Rodgers – an 1872 graduate of the College of envisioning that “the Occident and the pupils in the new settlement of Oakland on Agriculture – spoke admiringly of the cultural Orient, the past and the present, will the San Francisco Bay. Thanks to the college’s sophistication he had encountered on his here commingle their culture and the success, Durant was able to donate 160 acres of land in the near- travels to Asia, and emphasized the strategic location of the Pacific will be illumined from Berkeley.” by Berkeley settlement to the newly established state of University of California in relation to what he called the Pacific California. In the meantime, the federal government had made hub. “Here should be located,” he said, “a College of Commerce land and resources available to states through the Morrill Land and Travel, with an endowment sufficient to send its students to Grant Act of 1862 for the purpose of providing public education observe the countries with which we should have closest inter- to the sons and daughters of the nation’s farmers and workers. course. Here should be founded fellowships which would stimu- Combining Durant’s gift with land grant funds, the state estab- late research in those lines of investigation fruitful to sociology, lished the University of California in 1868 and appointed history, and commerce. With our established departments thus Durant to be its first president. supplemented, students of every race will be attracted to this The university’s charter stated that its Board of Regents should university. The Occident and the Orient, the past and the pre- provide education in all “the departments of science, literature, sent, will here commingle their culture and the Pacific will be Opposite page: art, industrial or professional pursuits,” listing among others the illumined from Berkeley.” Inspired by his vision, the governor The College of Commerce was first study of commerce. Thirty years after the founding of the univer- appointed Rodgers to the Board of Regents, where he went to housed in South Hall (right). sity, and thanks to the vision of Arthur Rodgers and the generous work on his idea. • 6 • numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page 7 numbered_boxes_remvd.cg3_2 5/2/05 11:17 AM Page 8 In a report to the board, Rodgers and fellow tion that the property and any proceeds Regents A.S. Hallidie and George T. Marye Jr. should be devoted to some branch of com- formally proposed that the university establish a mercial education. In a second gift in 1924, College of Commerce. It was a new field of Flood also donated her San Francisco residence study in the United States. Their report men- to the university for the benefit of the College of tioned the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. Cora Jane Flood’s substantial Economics, which had been established in 1881, What inspired Flood to make this generous gift? The gift to the University of but would not have a dean and be fully opera- record offers no conclusive answer. The best guess is that she California launched the tional until 1912, and efforts by the University wanted to honor her beloved father, James Clair Flood. James College of Commerce in 1898. of Chicago, which would not have a dean and be Flood was one of the original bonanza kings, whose Comstock operational until 1902. Lode had provided a fortune. He subsequently became one An international comparative study, however, showed that of the area’s major bankers and industrialists and also served there were many more opportunities for commercial study in as a Regent and a treasurer for the university for many years. Europe and Japan, sponsored mostly by merchant guilds, city coun- Cora Flood’s first gift was the largest private contribution in the cils, and similar organizations. Many commerce graduates went to university’s then 30-year history. work for government consular services. Germany, the leading nation The early years of the College of Commerce reflected in this field, featured 60 different commerce programs at the time and California’s agricultural and trading focus at the turn of the centu- fostered strong relationships between business and government. ry. San Francisco was the economic and financial center of the Reminding the university of its mandate as stated in the West Coast. University President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, who had Organic Act of 1868, the proposal for the College of Commerce been recruited by Rodgers to lead the university into the 20th cen- declared that: “We have reached that point in knowledge and tury, continuously advocated support for the College of improved methods where our production is far beyond the con- Commerce. In a moving address to the Merchants Association in sumption of our own people, and capable of vast expansion. ... We San Francisco in 1899, Wheeler spoke of the democratic role of must reach the markets of the world with low cost.” At the time, the new land grant people’s universities: “The day has passed the university itself was not widely known.